As a means to increase government revenues, which the government says will help reduce the nation’s ever-expanding federal deficit, the Department of Homeland Security is looking into a proposed change to border crossing policies that would force Canadians looking to visit the United States, arriving via air or sea, to pay more for the privilege.

The almost unrestrained drug trafficking in Mexico has pushed violent drug wars deeper into Central America, as drugs are funneled through small countries ill-equipped to handle the squeeze of traffickers using their shores, ports, and jungles for smuggling. The New York Times reported on March 23 that, even though traffickers have used Central American points for stopovers since the 70’s, “crackdowns on criminal organizations in Mexico and Colombia [and the Caribbean] have increasingly brought the powerful drug syndicates here [Honduras].” The seven tiny countries are now no longer just “stopovers” but territory coveted by cartels, and the scenes of escalating drug violence.

Socialist Venezuelan “President” Hugo Chavez prompted ridicule and concern about his well being after suggesting in a speech that “capitalism” and “imperialism” may have ended life on Mars, adding the possible demise of Martian civilization to a long list of ills the revolutionary leader blames on free markets.

In an interview with the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun, on July 4, 1925, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was asked if he thought that the revolutionary turmoil in China, India, Persia, Egypt, and other Eastern countries was a sign that the Western powers had dug themselves graves in the East and would end up being buried there.